Pro League Basketball Academy (PLBA) in Chennai

Since it's been more than three weeks into 2011, I don't think that calling it a 'new year' is justifiable anymore. Regardless, the new year did begin with an interesting new basketball development down in Chennai, a hotbed of Indian basketball activity and home to some of the country's biggest superstars. On January 2, the Pro League Basketball Academy (PLBA) was launched in Chennai - The PLBA is an initiative to promote and develop basketball both at the grassroots and professional level.

You can check out more information about PLBA on their official website.

Here's more from last week's news report on APN-News.com:

The main reason behind the launch of the initiative is to tap the talent and groom and develop them into better players. To accomplish these objectives, the academy will be organizing several events such as talent hunts, inter-school and inter-college basketball tournaments to pick the right talent. The selected talent will be groomed and trained by the academy, and also will be provided opportunities to play for club teams in the tournaments. Some of the major areas of focus of the academy are grassroots development, women players development, rural basketball development.

The PLBA also features a special programme for the development of Women's basketball. The PLBA will be coaching and managing a women's basketball team called PLBA Stars.

More:

The aim of the team is to give tournament exposure to developing players. The main idea behind this initiative is to provide the women basketball players, an exposure to the professional tournament [and] to promote basketball among women, to increase participation of women players, and to provide platform for the budding women players to perform in tournaments. The team players will be selected through a series of events, tournaments and camps to be organized by PLBA and will be trained for playing in the tournaments.

The PLBA Stars team is looking for sponsors to facilitate development and help player growth.